Summer Vacation Part 1: Bear Lake

I am SOOOOOO behind on this blog. When I started my other blog, my biggest goal was to make sure that I didn’t get behind on this blog. But, after our vacation, I realized that I had a lot of posts to catch up on. So, I didn’t catch. It knew it would take me hours that I didn’t have. Well, the more I procrastinated, the more behind I got. So, here we are, all the way at the end of October. I haven’t blogged here for 3 months (a new record! – not that it’s something to brag about). I’m making it a goal to get completely caught up as quickly as I can. If you are bored by all of the posts that happened months ago, sorry! I want to eventually turn this blog into a family book/journal, so I don’t really want to skip anything. 

Okay…here we go. Way back in July after we took our family vacation. We are so blessed to have kids that do so well driving in the car. We seem to be able to drive them just about anywhere and they love it! Not only that, but during the other times of the year, they ask when we are going to go on another road trip. And it’s the driving they like the most. A small part of  me can’t wait until they get a little older and can drive farther distances (not that they can’t handle a pretty far drive as it is). Anyway…so our family vacation.

We started out on one of our many trips this year to  Bear Lake visiting Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Frank. They traveled over from Oregon to look for a cabin. They rented a condo practically on the beach. It was our very first time going to Bear Lake, and it is beautiful! It’s called the “Caribbean of the Rockies” because the lake water is absolutely beautiful!

Pictures really don’t do it justice. It’s so pretty!

So, here are some of the things we did while at Bear Lake for a few days.

The Oregon Trail Museum:

Montpelier is about 1/2 hour north of Bear Lake. It is a really small town. Probably a little bigger than Rigby, but not much. It has a few gas stations and grocery stores. And, it has the The National Oregon/California Trail Center. We thought it would be fun to take the kids to it.

Poor Logan was so tired that day! It was back in his nap-taking days. I miss those days….. I thought the monkey backpack he was wearing was so funny in this picture.

 

The Park:

After visiting the museum, we took all of the kids to lunch then to the park. They all needed a few minutes to use up their energy!

The park was hosting some kind of car show. It wasn't all that great, but there was one really awesome part. Our kids got to meet Bumblebee (from Transformers!). Okay….not the real Bumblebee. But, the car owner apparently worked security on the set of Transformers. He replicated the car and had lots of fun movie memorabilia on display.

I couldn’t believe the owner let all of our kids inside the car! He took quite a few pictures to add to his collection. He said that he had never had some many people (kids?) in it at the same time!

 

At the Condo:

There was plenty to do at the Condo, too. There was a swimming pool that the kids took full advantage of. Thankfully, Dave and Chris offered to supervise in the cold water. I don’t know how kids don’t ever seem to mind swimming in cold water!

 

We also had a fun barbecue on the deck after swimming.

 

I think the kid’s favorite part was the bedroom of bunk beds! They created a kid fort dream with all of the extra blankets! Then, they all snuggled up and watched movies until they *finally* went to sleep!

Bear Lake was such a fun way to start an incredibly memorable trip! Thank you Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Frank for inviting us!

Family Reunion

Dave's family is so awesome and has a family reunion every year. This year is was Paul's turn to host. They decided to have a camp out at their house. It's so fun out there! Paul lives on a farm about an hour outside of Rexburg. It's pretty isolated and peaceful. Not to mention that it is a kid heaven! All of the kids were thrilled to be there. With all of the horses and pigs and wide open spaces, no one got bored.

This is the sunset out in Monteview. It was so pretty out there!

But the most entertaining part was all of the water. My kids (minus Logan) would live in the water every day of the summer if we let them. Logan doesn't love it, but I'm sure he'll eventually be the same. In the backyard there was a pool and lots and lots of water balloons. We had a great game of water balloon volleyball. Even Grandma got in on the action. It was a fun weekend!

Max spent almost all of his time running and jumping in the swimming pool. A lot of the other kids were a little bit apprehensive, but not Max. He was the first in the pool and the very last out. We pretty much had to drag him out of it. We set up the action setting on our camera so you could see how funny he was:

4th of July

Most of you already know that we spend our 4th selling fireworks. It starts 9 days before the 4th and in some ways continues until several days after while we finish the inventory and paperwork. We always joke that we celebrate the 4th of July more than most people!

This year was a little different because TNT gave us an extra location. Plus, Michelle and Thomas weren't able to help us like they have in years past. There was a little while that we were pretty nervous about how we were going to run all three locations! Luckily, Dave's sister Andrea and her family stepped up and helped us pull it off. It was a tough year with the dryness and all of the fires. Fireworks sales were down all over the country. We feel blessed that we got the third location so we didn't end up losing money. The third location was just a one year experiment for TNT and we probably won't have it again next year.

With all of the business of selling fireworks, we try to make sure our kids still have time to celebrate. I always take them to the parade that Rexburg has. Afterward, Grandmas was so generous and took them to play with cousins for the rest of the day.

Logan is a huge fan of pop-it's. Every time I took him to visit his dad at the fireworks tent, all he could think about was pop-it's. I think he probably went through a good 20 boxes.

 

Toothless

At the end of June, Max had a pretty eventful day. Well, eventful in six year old terms, anyway. He came to me in the morning and showed me that his two front teeth were loose. We were planning to help some people clean their house before moving, so I got him ready and didn't worry very much about his teeth. In the middle of the cleaning, we had to run back to our house and grab more paper towels. Just as we pulled in the driveway, tooth #1 came out. He was so excited! We put it in the kitchen window and went back to clean. After a while, he came to me and excitedly showed me that his other tooth was so loose that it was bleeding. He worked and worked on that tooth for several hours and finally got it to fall out! He was over the moon by this point! Never has anyone in our family (or in the world according to Max) lost both of their front teeth in the same day!

The tooth fairy must have agreed that it was indeed a pretty special occasion. This is what she left Max:

Now, and only for a while, I lovingly call Max "Toothless". He thinks How to Train Your Dragon is about the coolest thing in the world, so he doesn't seem to mind.

 

 

Father's Day

This year Father's Day kind of snuck up on me. Earlier this year, Dave got a new meat smoker. He already had one, but this new one is like a Cadillac of meat smokers. It's really high tech. It's more like an outdoor oven than a meat smoker. We haven't tried it yet, but it can even cold smoke cheese. Yum! Since it was such a big purchase, we decided that it would be both Dave's birthday and Father's Day present this year.

As Father's Day was approaching, I felt like we couldn't just let the day go without acknowledging it. Plus the kids really wanted to do something for their dad. So, with a little help from Pinterest, we decided to make him a DAD photo collage.

It was really bright and sunny outside when we were taking the pictures. But the kids were troopers and all the pictured turned out really good once we turned then black and white.

 

Logan had 2 different poses. I had a hard time choosing which one to use!

The kids were pretty proud and excited to present it to their dad. Max turned our chair into a Green Bay Packers shrine for his dad to sit in before opening his present. Max is turning into this thoughtful party planner. It's pretty fun to watch!

 

Swimming Lessons

We signed Bria and Max up for swimming lessons this year. They had so much fun! Logan was a little bit too young for the toddler class. He was petty jealous, though.

 

Both of the kids did pretty well, but they definitely need more practice! They were both in the same beginner class. I think they were having more fun than learning. But I have noticed a huge improvement in their water abilities after lessons.

 

I really lucked out, too. On the first day of classes, I discovered that my friend Amy had signed her kids up for the same time! It was so nice to have some good conversation while we were waiting.

Overall, it was a great experience! We'll definitely do it again next year.

 

Zoo

Way back at the beginning of June, we got to go to the Idaho Falls zoo for Taryn's birthday. Quite a few members of the family went. It turned out to be a fun day. (Bria was missing. She got invited to a diffent birthday party the same day.